


Threadbare

by commoncomitatus



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 7 [7]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:13:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8411494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: They both have their demons.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic fills a Cross-Square extra on my [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) card.  
> Prompts: Abandonment Issues, Trust Issues (Wild Card)
> 
> So, apparently Mel/Janice angst is my _raison d'être_ in this fandom? I am very, very sorry.

*

They both have their demons.

Mel’s are slithering serpentine things, sinister and sneaky and sometimes seductive. They wend and wind and wrap themselves around her, coiling tighter and tighter until there’s nothing else in the world. Most of the time, she doesn’t even realise they’re there until they have her, until their scales are scratching her skin and their voices are whispering in her ear, until she’s already halfway towards believing the things she knows aren’t true. They sink their teeth in slowly, turn the torture into something semi-sweet, something she almost craves.

 _It’s only a matter of time,_ they tell her, again and again and again. _Sooner or later she’ll see you for what you really are. An imposter and a fraud, a clumsy little slip of a girl making a name for herself on other people’s hard work. She’ll figure you out, and then it’ll all be over. She’ll send you back home and not even bother to say goodbye. It’s nothing less than you deserve._

There’s a strange kind of comfort, or so she tells herself, in believing that. The inevitability is like a cloud hovering above her head, an albatross around her neck marking her out for shame and bad luck. Acknowledging it is a step towards accepting it, a step towards not falling apart when it finally happens. And it _will_ happen. They’re right about that. Tomorrow, next week, next month, maybe even a decade from now. She doesn’t know when, but she knows that it will. She can’t stand up on her own merit; she doesn’t have any to speak of. Sooner or later Janice will realise that, and then…

Well. Then they’ll have her, won’t they? The slithering serpentine things, the smiling snakes coiled around in her head. They’ll have her, and they’ll swallow her whole. _We told you so. Who do you think you are?_

Janice’s demons are louder. They’re not sinister like Mel’s, but violent. When they go after her, they go for the throat and they go for blood. Janice’s demons aren’t serpents, they’re dragons; dark and devastating, they tear with their teeth and shake her down to the bone, and they would destroy everything given half a chance. Mel has never seen them up close — Janice would never allow that — but she’s heard them roaring in the night when Janice thinks she’s asleep, and she’s seen the trophies they’ve carved out of her body.

Janice doesn’t let her call them scars. The first time Mel used that word, she smiled and said, _“They’re not scars if you can see them. Scars are what you carry on the inside.”_

Then she stopped smiling, and wouldn’t let Mel see her face for the rest of the day.

Sometimes Mel wonders if she’ll ever be allowed to see the scars that Janice carries on the inside. That’s when her own demons get louder, though; all she has to do is think about it and the slithering turns to squeezing, and then to strangling. _What right do you have to see any part of her? Who are you to uncover her? She’s earned everything she is; you didn’t even earn the plane ticket that brought you here. She’d sooner die than share herself with the likes of you._

In her heart, Mel knows that’s not true. But it’s hard to hold the truth close when the lies are sharing her bed.

Sharing a bed with a woman is much easier than she thought it would be. But sharing a bed with a woman, a serpent, and a dragon is so very hard.

They each have their own way of coping, their own way of silencing their inner voices, of driving the demons back down before their blood can seep into the sheets and leave a stain that won’t wash out. Neither of them will ever say the words out loud, but they know each other in every possible way by now, and they’re both too familiar with demons not to recognise one when it wakes.

Mel copes with her demons in the same way she copes with everything else in her life: by being louder than they are. She gestures wildly with her hands, lets her body take on its own kind of language, and when she speaks it’s like a woman possessed, in a frenzy of nonsense and noise. She does whatever she can to silence the lies that sound so much like truths, to quiet the rattling and rustling in her brain, the voices that have the audacity to see the truth in what she is. She silences them by speaking and by smiling, by smoothing down the creases in her clothes and her skin, by reminding herself as loudly as she can that she is happy and they can’t take that away from her.

Janice is the opposite. When her demons get loud, she gets quiet. She puts her head down, works herself down to the bone, until the exhaustion darn near kills her. Her shoulders strain, her shirt sticks to her skin, soaked with sweat, and still she doesn’t say a word. She forgets to eat and drink; sometimes she forgets to breathe. Mel often wonders if she’s trying to exhaust her monsters by exhausting herself. It’s so typical of her, she thinks, to try and slay a dragon by throwing herself upon its teeth. Mel would put herself between them in a heartbeat if she could, but what chance does she have of defeating Janice’s dragons when she can’t even slay her own silly serpents?

It’s the tail end of a long day. The sun is setting; the tent is bathed in a warm orange glow. The light throws itself into Mel’s face, and throws Janice’s into shadow.

Janice is silent as she unlaces her boots. Mel sits on the edge of the bed, watching, and can’t seem to stop talking.

“You’ll work yourself into the grave,” she says. “When was the last time you ate?”

Janice doesn’t answer. With her boots off and kicked into some dusty old corner, she shrugs out of her work shirt. It’s dark with sweat, the mark of a good day’s labour and a bad day’s thinking. Mel nearly chokes as it falls to the floor, enticed by the little it reveals.

Today is a bad day, apparently. Janice leaves her undershirt on, and her hat as well, hiding the parts of her that Mel is desperate to see. She’s shy about her body maybe half the time; the other half she seems to forget it belongs to her at all. It’s always a gamble, which version of her will come to bed at the end of the day. Her abdomen ripples as she moves, the fabric of her undershirt clinging to the skin, and Mel doesn’t even try to hide the way it makes her stare, mouth dry and eyes like saucers. In the back of her mind, a voice asks, _What in the world is a woman like that doing with you?_

She shakes it off, and whispers, “Goodness, you’re a vision.”

Janice doesn’t say anything. She yanks off her belt with a teasing, seductive _hiss_ , then unbuttons her pants but leaves them on.

Mel sighs. “C’mere,” she says, patting the bed. “Sit down a spell. You’ve been on your feet all day.”

Still as silent as the tomb, Janice does as she’s told.

Her lips are cracked when Mel covers them with hers, and very dry. Mel sighs again into her mouth, and kisses her as slow and as sweet as she can, hoping she can pull the tension out of her if she just cares deeply enough.

Janice doesn’t respond to sweetness, though. She never has, and she probably never will. When she kisses back, it’s rough and crude, just skirting the edges of violence. She always knows when to draw the line, and she’s never drawn blood, but Mel can feel it in her, the power simmering just below the surface, passion and pain and the need to possess. That’s Janice, always full to overflowing with things Mel will never understand.

She wonders, not for the first time, how much of herself Janice keeps in check for her sake, how much she holds back just so Mel can feel safe. She knows what Janice is capable of outside the bedroom; does she sometimes wish she could bring some of that into these moments too?

After a breathless eternity, Janice pulls away. “ _Fuck_.”

Mel kisses her temple. “Why are you always so crude?”

“Because.” She sounds terribly hoarse. “I need you.”

Well. Mel knew that already. She could taste it in her mouth. Still, though, she smiles because Janice spoke, because she finally broke that blasted silence, because at least this is simple.

She leans back just a little, an invitation that doesn’t need the words she gives it. “You know I’m yours.”

It’s a reminder for Janice’s sake, of course, but it’s one for herself as well. _I’m yours, yes, for as long as you want me, as long as you’ll have me._

The snakes inside her head smile and say, _Not for much longer, then._

Janice doesn’t need much more prompting than that. She slides off the bed, kneels in front of Mel, and gazes up with the most obscene look on her face. It’s enough to drive anyone to impropriety.

Mel’s skirt is, frankly, in the way. Fashionably speaking, it’s a feat of engineering, comfortable and practical at the same time, but right now it’s an unwelcome burden. She can’t shift her legs with the fabric clinging so tightly, but she really wants to.

In lieu of what she wants, what they both do, she leans forward a little, pulls the hat from Janice’s head so the light can catch her face. The darn thing is always the last to go, even when Janice is feeling free and easy; Mel secretly suspects she’d keep it on all night long if she could. No doubt she feels safe when she can hide under its dusty old brim, shielded from the world outside and shielded from Mel.

It’s difficult not to take that personally, even on a good day. Today, feeling as raw as she is… _well_.

Janice turns her face away, as though sensing some part of that, and rests her cheek on Mel’s thigh. Mel wishes she would look at her, if only for a moment or two. She wants to feel connected, wants to feel like they’re both here, not just her. But Janice is like a wall tonight, and Mel has never been one for bashing her head against such things.

“Did something happen?” she asks.

Janice shakes her head, and doesn’t look up. Her skin catches on Mel’s skirt. “Take it off,” she mumbles instead.

Mel has always been good at following orders; it’s the one thing she’s got going for her. She raises herself high enough to unzip the skirt, leans back to let Janice do the rest. Obliging, if impatient, Janice tugs the thing down over her hips, yanking roughly when she encounters even the least resistance.

Mel thinks about chiding her for that, but Janice is following the skirt’s progress with her lips, tiny little butterfly kisses that feel like burns against the skin, and it’s suddenly very hard to find any objection to the way she handles things. She’s a giving lover, Mel has learned; she’ll spend hours upon hours tracing the lines of her body, learning what she likes best, what makes her respond, repeating the same thing over and over again until Mel can barely stand it, until the serpents in her head are almost, _almost_ silent.

The skirt pools on the floor. Mel lifts up her feet, and Janice kicks it into a corner. She stares at the junction of Mel’s hips, still covered, if barely, by the silk of her underwear.

“Christ.” She wets her lips. “I want…”

But she doesn’t finish.

Freed from the binds of the skirt, Mel lets her legs fall open. Janice kisses the inside of her knees, first one and then the other, back and forth and back again, like she’s trying to match her breathing to the rhythm of her kisses. Her hair, falling free from its messy ponytail, picks up the hat’s duty in keeping her face covered, keeping her emotions safely out of sight. Mel wants to brush it back, wants to drink in the sight of her, but she doesn’t. Janice is tight as whip like she always is, but somehow she seems so fragile when she’s hiding her face like this.

She’s not the only one. On display and intimately exposed, Mel feels vulnerable too. It’s difficult to cut into Janice’s personal space when she knows herself how delicate such a thing is.

“You’re beautiful,” Janice says, the words couched in a kiss to Mel’s thigh.

“Now…” Her breath hitches in her throat, fleetingly overwhelmed. “Now, I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

Janice inches higher. “I’m not.”

She finds Mel’s underwear, grazes the slippery material with her teeth. Mel sucks in her breath, lets her eyes and her head roll backwards. It’s so easy in moments like this to ignore the voices, the whispering tendrils of doubt trying to wrap themselves around her and squeeze until she’s dead. It’s so easy to float above the world they insist is real, to make a home for herself here in the grand delusion that Janice won’t ever grow bored with her.

“Oh,” she gasps, because hearing her own voice helps too. They don’t speak when she does. “Yes, oh, _yes_ …”

Janice chuckles against her, a low rhythmic hum. The sound vibrates, catches on Mel’s underwear, and then Janice replaces her teeth with her tongue, licking up and then across, all but ruining the fabric.

Mel groans, rather more at the thought than the sensation. “Janice, those aren’t… _ah_ … cheap.”

Janice snorts. “They should be,” she says. “You’d think you would’ve learned that lesson by now.”

Well. How’s a lady supposed to argue with that?

Mel sits up a little, tugs on the back of Janice’s head. She wants to see her, wants to watch her face transform with the music of her laughter. Well, _almost_ laughter; this is as close to it as she ever gets, even in bed. It’s not much, but Mel has learned that it’s all she’s likely to see in this lifetime. She wants to connect to her, wants to see not just the woman who is pleasuring her but the woman she actually cares about, the woman she wants to spend her life with. She wants to see _Janice_ in all her sweaty and dishevelled glory, and to know that Janice is here with her as well, that this isn’t some crude, wanton moment, that this is theirs and only theirs. If only for a moment or two, if only while her mouth is on her, Mel wants to know that Janice is really _here_.

She tugs again, more urgent now. “Get up here,” she says. “I wanna see your face.”

Janice blanches, shoulders going tight, like the very idea is a nightmare. “Mel…”

“Please?”

She looks away as she says it, for both their sakes. They don’t often discuss their insecurities, and certainly not in bed. Mel certainly isn’t opposed to doing that, if that’s what it takes to get things out in the open, but it can’t be a one-sided affair.

That’s part of the problem; from Janice’s perspective, it has to be exactly that. Mel would give anything to see the dragons she fights, to know the colour of their scales, but she knows that’s never going to happen. Janice doesn’t bare herself at all; nine times out of ten, she keeps her clothes on until long after they’re done. If she won’t even bare her chest, what chance does Mel have with her soul?

Not much. They’ve scarcely even started and already Janice is bowing her head again. Her face, the one place Mel so desperately wants to see, is officially off-limits.

“Not now,” she mumbles.

Mel sighs. It stings, but she was kind of expecting it. They don’t have enough extremities between them to count the number of times they’ve made love, but she could count on one hand, and with fingers to spare, the number of times she’s had Janice’s eyes on hers when they do it. She often wonders if this is is a Covington thing, another family legacy she won’t ever talk about. There is so much brackish water behind Janice’s eyes, but until she’s allowed to look into them for more than two seconds Mel doubts she’ll ever be able to drain it.

“You’re beautiful too,” she says. “Why you always gotta hide yourself away?”

“Because I don’t…”

She doesn’t finish. But then, of course, she doesn’t have to. They’ve lived this moment before.

_Because I don’t trust you._

Mel learned that lesson the hard way, a wash of sharp needling pains that wracked them both. They were further along than this, pressed up against each other; Mel was flushed and sated, Janice desperately wanting, and Mel was doing her darndest to rectify that. It was a rare moment of openness on both their parts; Janice had her head thrown back against the pillows, her eyes half-lidded and cloudy with need, her face exposed and her body completely naked.

That hasn’t happened since. Now she’s always sure to keep one or the other covered, and usually both. But back then, some long weeks gone by now, she opened herself up completely.

Mel had her nose pressed against Janice’s neck, breathing in the scent of sex and sweat; she had her eyes up, locked on her face, struck dumb by the sight of her so exposed. She had one hand on Janice’s breast, the other down between her legs, and she remembers so vividly the way her breath caught as she readied herself, readied them both, as she stroked Janice slick and spread her open, fingers poised to slip inside…

…only to find that she couldn’t. Janice’s body, much like the rest of her, would not take her, and for a shattering split-second the pain pulled them both apart.

Mel didn’t understand, and at least on the surface Janice seemed almost as perplexed as she was. Mel remembers the look on her face, the pain swallowed by embarrassment and then confusion. She remembers the way she tried to laugh and shrug it off, to pretend it didn’t matter, to make believe there wasn’t something fundamentally wrong with one or both of them.

 _“That’s never happened before,”_ she said quietly.

Mel frowned, and asked, _“Is it my fault?”_

Janice shook her head, of course, but Mel noted the way she didn’t say ‘no’. Well, how could she? It had never happened before; she couldn’t possibly know for sure.

It wasn’t until the next time they came together, when Janice refused to let go of her wrist, when she kept all her clothes on and hid her face away, that Mel understood.

 _“You don’t trust me,”_ she realised sadly.

That time, Janice did not shake her head.

She shakes it now, though. It’s not a denial here, just a dismissal. She pulls herself up, but only as far as it takes to reach the lower hem of Mel’s blouse, and then she’s smiling again with her hands on the buttons.

It’s an apology, or something like one. This is the biggest of her demons, Mel knows, or at least it’s the one that roars the loudest in the bedroom. Janice doesn’t trust, can’t trust, never learned how to trust. She’s always been honest about that, right from the very beginning, the moment she put a gun to Mel’s face for no reason at all, the moment Mel realised that was just something she would have to live with.

She didn’t expect it to sting as much as it does after so much acceptance. She didn’t expect Janice’s demons to make hers scream so much louder.

 _She doesn’t trust you,_ they tell her, again and again and again. _If she doesn’t trust you now, even after everything you’ve been through together, you know she never will. She’s just biding her time, waiting for the right moment to get rid of you. She doesn’t want to hurt your feelings but she’ll do it soon enough._

She tries to silence them now, covering Janice’s hands with hers, guiding her over the buttons, the folds and creases of her blouse, letting the contact and the routine steady her some.

“Gentle,” she says. Her voice shakes. “This isn’t cheap either.”

Janice snorts. “Tell me again why I let you get away with this expensive crap?”

Mel opens her mouth to say, _‘because you love me’_ , but the words won’t come. She doesn’t say them out loud; neither of them do. She wants to, sometimes more desperately than she wants this, Janice’s hands on her chest, Janice’s mouth between her legs, Janice’s body with all its not-scars covering her so completely. More than she wants to come undone against her tongue, she wants to shape those words with her own. _You love me. I love you. This is forever, the only thing it can be_.

But apparently Janice isn’t the only one who struggles with trust. Mel doesn’t trust that Janice won’t shake her head again if she hears all that.

So, instead, she just asks, in a broken childish whisper, “Do you really want me?”

Janice’s mouth falls open. She stares down at her hands, scrabbling at the last button. “God, yes,” she says. “More than anything. More than…”

“More than what?” Mel presses, feeling her voice catch.

Janice kisses her. Rough, like she always does. Her teeth sharp, her tongue hot, her lips bruise-fierce. Strange, Mel thinks, how many things Janice’s mouth can say when it can’t make words.

When it’s over, they’re both panting. Janice cups Mel’s face, but turns her own away. “More than anything,” she says again. “More than the scrolls. More than the world.”

Mel closes her eyes. She feels Janice’s breath, warm against her skin, and finds her mouth again by memory.

Her shirt is off by the time they pull apart this time, and she opens her eyes to find Janice pawing clumsily at her brassiere. She always struggles with that, like she’s never seen one before. She has, of course; for all her masculinity, she wears one herself, and in any case Mel has never deluded herself that hers were the first breasts Janice ever ‘liberated’. It defies explanation, the way they reduce her to this, to stammering and fumbling and—

“ _God_ , Mel.”

—and _that_. Her name in tandem with the Almighty’s, and Mel should be aghast at such blasphemy but she’s not.

Janice ducks her head, circling Mel’s nipple with her tongue, and for a long, aching moment all thoughts of blasphemy fall out of Mel’s head along with everything else.

It’s almost unbearably good. Janice has one hand at the small of Mel’s back to keep her balance, and the other one is touching her through her underwear, long and lazy strokes that threaten to make the silk wet for very different reasons. Mel could happily lose days to this, the sensation surging up inside her and the blood rushing between her ears, the way it drowns out everything, her own voice and the ones ringing inside her head. She can’t hear anything, can’t think of anything, and though she knows exactly where they’re going it wouldn’t matter if they never got any further than this, because _this_ … this is what keeps her grounded. This is the truth they can’t take away.

She leans back when it gets too much, stretching and spreading herself out on the bed. Janice watches her move, tongue flitting out to lick at her lips, chest rising and falling rapidly. Mel gets a rare glimpse of her eyes, dark and smoky and starving; she wants to tell Janice how beautiful they are, how beautiful _she_ is when she’s watching and wanting her like this, but she knows that would only draw Janice’s attention there. She’ll look away and never look back, and Mel doesn’t want that. She wants to keep these little flashes secret and all hers, precious gifts that Janice doesn’t even know she’s giving.

Moving slowly, Janice climbs over her. She hovers there for a moment, panting and utterly undone. It’s like she’s as overwhelmed by this as Mel is, and Mel can’t believe that’s something she’s allowed to see. Janice Covington, undone and overwhelmed, and by _her_. It makes her dizzy, makes her groin tingle, works her up almost more than Janice’s hands and mouth. It makes her want, so desperately, to believe.

“ _God_ …” Janice groans again, and Mel is undone too.

She reaches for Janice’s waist, traces the outline of her ribs with her thumbs. Her undershirt is damp with sweat, and Mel wrinkles her nose at the feel of it. “Can’t you take this off?”

Anger flashes in Janice’s eyes, but she doesn’t resist. She pulls the darn thing up over her head with a sigh, then immediately hides her face again.

“Happy?” she mutters.

Mel thinks about saying ‘no’. She wants more, she wants everything. She wants the brassiere gone, the pants and the men’s underwear, all of it. She wants Janice’s skin, her body, wants every little piece of her open and yielding and surrendered, but she knows she won’t get that tonight. It’s been written all over her face ever since she bent to unlace her boots. The silence, the distance, her rough kisses and delicate caresses, everything; she’s so tense, so focused, like every move is a battle against herself. She wants to silence her voices too, and she can’t do that if she thinks Mel can hear them as well.

Mel respects that. More, she understands.

Still, she can’t keep from sliding her hands a little lower, fingers dipping under the waistband of Janice’s pants. Undone as they are, they’re very loose, all but hanging from her hips. She could tug them down and off without much effort if she wanted, but she won’t. She knows Janice’s boundaries very well.

Not that it matters, of course. Janice doesn’t believe it. No matter how pure Mel’s intentions, Janice still won’t trust her. She’s got Mel’s wrists in her hands almost before Mel has done anything at all, yanking her away and pinning her arms above her head.

“Leave it,” she says, knife-sharp.

“I wasn’t going to…” Mel starts.

But oh, what’s the darn point?

Janice holds her wrists for a long moment, until Mel’s arms start to burn, until she can’t quite keep the wince from touching her face. Only then does she let them go.

“Sorry.”

Mel blinks. Unexpectedly, she feels close to tears.

“Why don’t you trust me?” she whispers.

Janice shakes her head, turning away with her whole body.

“We don’t have to do this,” she says, as if that was ever part of the question, as if Mel would ever conflate this with that. “We can stop if you want.”

“No,” Mel says. “That’s the last thing in the world I want.”

It’s true; it is. For all that she wishes Janice would give her more, there’s nothing in the world that makes her feel alive like this. She wants it, aches for it with every fibre of her being, and not just in the way that’s tightening her nipples and seeping through her underwear. She wants Janice’s body, wants her hands and her mouth, wants her to cover her and take her and do whatever she wants with her. She wants Janice to _love_ her, and she knows that this is the only way she has of doing that. If she does, if she can. If she’s capable of such a thing.

This is it. This is love, in the only form Janice can stand to look at it, the only way Mel needs to hear it. When she’s the one talking, crying out not to silence the demons in her head but because she’s overcome and overwhelmed, because she can’t hold the pleasure inside. When Janice is silent not because she’s holding down her own demons but because her mouth is full of Mel. When they’re both the same damaged people they always are, but made purer by being together. It doesn’t need words; it only needs _them_.

Janice takes a shaky breath. She’s on the brink of something painful, a confession, but Mel doesn’t want to hear it any more. _Later,_ she decides, and kisses the words out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Janice says again when she pulls away. Her voice is thick, her lips wet. “God, Mel, I…”

“Hush,” Mel says. Then, with a boldness that still doesn’t come easily to a woman with her upbringing, “Now, don’t you think there are better things you can do with that mouth of yours?”

Janice’s hips give an involuntary jerk at that, and she buries her face in Mel’s neck. “Sweet Jesus.”

Mel chuckles. She strokes Janice’s back for a moment or two, drinking in the triumph of making her react, then guides her back down to her breasts. “It’s rude to keep a lady waiting, wouldn’t you say?”

Janice, of course, says nothing of the sort. For once, Mel finds that she doesn’t mind the silence.

She works her slowly, like always. The roughness, the borderline-violence is reserved for her mouth, for biting on her lips and sucking on her tongue. When she’s kissing Mel’s body — her breasts, her throat, her breasts, her ribs, her breasts, her stomach, her breasts, then finally, _finally_ lower — she does it with such tenderness that Mel can’t help believing that it really is love. Janice is never gentle, not with anyone or anything, not even her precious history, but with Mel’s body she’s like a priest with the Bible.

Reverent. Worshipful. Each kiss a brush-stroke, each lick a symphony, each tickle and tease and—

“ _There_!”

She can’t help herself. It’s a gasp, a cry, a stammered-out moan, and it affects Janice almost as deeply as it affects Mel herself. She jerks again, and squirms with her whole body; Mel watches her thighs quiver, watches her fight not to press them together to ease the ache. Mel certainly wouldn’t mind if she did; there’s something devastatingly arousing in seeing her reduced to _that_ in the middle of _this_ , in knowing that she’s the reason why. It makes her feel powerful in a way she never does when their clothes are on.

Janice licks her through her underwear again, distracting them both. The fabric is soaked through now, and Mel can’t get away with blaming Janice for all of it. She throws her leg over Janice’s shoulder, and digs her heel into the strong, straining muscle.

 _Get rid of them,_ she’s saying, _before we ruin them completely._

Janice isn’t usually one for doing what she’s told, even in bed, but in this it seems she’s willing to submit. She flashes the smuggest grin Mel’s ever seen, then finally peels the darn thing off.

It doesn’t take very much after that, though Mel holds out as best she can. She wants to make it last, wants to drown in it, in Janice’s face pressed against her private parts, in the way she strokes her thighs as she works, the way she moans and mumbles against her, across her, _into_ her. Janice’s tongue isn’t particularly good at talking, but it’s a maestro when it comes to this.

Mel’s climax hits hard, and it goes on and on. She cries out, once loudly and then a couple more times, softer and softer as the waves diminish. Though she knows better than to try, she wants so desperately to say Janice’s name, to ground them both in what this is and what it means. _This is all you, only you. No-one’s ever known me like you do, no-one’s ever touched me like this, no-one’s ever made me—_

Oh, the things she wishes she could tell her.

When it’s over, when Mel’s cries and whimpers are little more than breathless gasps, Janice turns her head to the side. “Good?” she asks, feathering kisses down Mel’s thigh.

“Oh, yes.”

“You’re beautiful,” Janice says. She’s breathless too, desperately grinding herself against the edge of the bed. “You’re so beautiful when you do that. Christ, I could just…”

“Not yet.” Mel barely has the strength to move, but she reaches down to find Janice’s hand and give a weak little tug. “Come up here.”

This time, apparently still feeling a little of that lingering tenderness, Janice obeys. She kisses her way up Mel’s body with easy languor — her hipbones, her belly, her breasts, her breasts, her breasts — then flops down next to her. Mel feels herself clench again at the sight of Janice’s wet lips, a soft pulsing aftershock as she thinks about the stains they must have left on her body. She leans in to take them, to taste herself.

Janice is as rough as ever, her kisses sharp and serrated with need. Mel can feel the desire surging inside her; she can’t seem to keep herself still. She’s rocking her hips, arching against her with a kind of wordless urgency, and Mel wants nothing more than to strip her down and cover her body until it breaks, until Janice stops being so darn silent and starts saying her name.

She doesn’t get a chance, though. Janice breaks the kiss with a needy little whine, hides her face in Mel’s neck, and tugs on her hips.

“Please…”

She doesn’t say that word very often — _“Covingtons don’t beg,”_ she said once, and never let Mel forget it — so when she does it carries weight. Mel moans, ripped apart all over again, and angles her leg upwards.

“That okay?”

“Yeah.” Janice writhes against her, hot breath searing Mel’s collarbone, then bears down on her thigh. “Don’t move. Don’t… _please_ … just…”

And then she’s silent again, her body speaking for her in jagged, juddering motion.

Mel holds her close as she moves, one hand splayed across her back and the other tangled in her hair. She tries to feel connected to this, tries to feel a part of it, but the distance between them feels so vast through the layers of Janice’s clothes; her pants are rough against Mel’s bare skin, the friction muted and effortful. Mel often wonders how Janice can find satisfaction this way, with so little direct stimulation, but she’s never been bold enough to ask. As with everything, she just takes what she can, the few points of skin-on-skin contact that Janice does allow.

It’s not much. Janice’s back, taut and tight, twitching under her palm; Janice’s face pressed to her neck, her hair plastered to her forehead, the skin drenched with sweat, her breath quick and urgent. After the intimacy of having Janice’s tongue inside her, this feels like very little, but Mel clings to it and tries to imagine it’s everything.

Janice is efficient, or else she was just that close to begin with. Mel tenses her thigh when she feels her start to shake, but that’s the only contribution she really gets to make. Janice thrusts roughly against her, then stops and goes whipcord-tense all over. She whimpers a little, but doesn’t cry out, and her clothes are too thick for Mel to really feel the spasms of her climax. She only knows when it’s over because Janice’s body goes completely slack and she falls into her arms, panting and murmuring and kissing her neck.

“You’re good,” she’s mumbling. “God, you’re so good.”

Mel strokes her back. “Well, now,” she says, stifling a sigh, “I didn’t do nothing.”

Janice lifts her head a little, squints at her through the heady haze. She’s flushed and dishevelled and so incredibly beautiful, but Mel barely gets a moment to appreciate it before she ducks back down again.

“Sorry.”

“Now, don’t you do that,” Mel says. “Long as you’re happy, it don’t much matter.”

She’s not sure if that’s really true, though, and she knows that Janice won’t believe it. She knows her too well not to recognise when she’s less than truthful.

The thing is, Mel can’t remember ever bringing Janice to a climax all on her own. When they’re not doing it this way, Janice working herself against Mel’s body like she’s some kind of instrument, she takes Mel’s hand in her own and shows her exactly what to do, stroke by stroke. She’s always in complete control, driving her and moving her, dictating every little detail with her fingers locked tight as vices around her wrist. She never lets go, not even for a second, and if she didn’t know her so well, Mel might almost think she was afraid.

She’s not, though. Janice isn’t afraid of anything, least of all Mel’s slender fingers.

It’s complicated. Mel knows that, has always known it. Trust is Janice’s biggest demon, a roaring dragon with its teeth lodged in her chest, and it makes intimacy a constant struggle. It doesn’t come from a place of fear or discomfort or anything one might expect; it just _is_. The distance, the control, it’s just a part of who she is, a part of who she’s had to be for so long she can’t be anything else. Deep down in her heart, Mel knows it’s not about her.

_It doesn’t mean she cares any less. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t want you, doesn’t need you, doesn’t love you._

She knows all of that. But then, she has her demons to contend with too, and they’re as clever as Janice’s are violent.

After she catches her breath, Janice rolls over onto her side and gets very, very quiet.

Mel wants to follow her. She wants to wrap her arms around her and hold her close, wants to cut through her silence with meaningless, purposeless words, but she doesn’t. A lady never presumes to go where she’s not invited, after all, and Janice would never take anything offered when she’s feeling so raw. In her unique dictionary, compassion is a dirty word.

So Mel lets her have her space. She lies there on her back, feeling the chill set in as the sweat cools on her skin, and lets the discomfort act as a distraction. She thinks about reaching for a blanket, but the moment is too heavy to risk moving. She can hear the wheels grinding in Janice’s head — in a strange, sad way, they’re louder and more obvious than her orgasm was — and she doesn’t want to risk getting her fingers trapped in the machinery.

They stay there like that for what feels like hours. Janice is curled on her side, her arms clamped around her stomach as though she’s in pain. Mel can feel the air growing thick between them, the whispering little tendrils gathering like clouds before a storm. Whatever Janice is thinking about, it must weigh a great deal.

“You got quiet,” Mel says softly.

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Mel sighs. She doesn’t want to push, doesn’t want to force herself into a place she’s not welcome, but she aches so badly for this, for Janice to talk to her or look at her, or even just _acknowledge_ her.

“You sure?” she asks.

Janice shakes her head. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, like a spasm ripped from her bones, she blurts out, “It’s not you.”

Mel blinks. For about half a second she doesn’t understand. Then, far worse, she does.

 _This is it,_ the demons in her head are saying. _You’ve been waiting for it, and so has she. This is the moment where she turns around and walks away. Right here and right now, with your taste still in her mouth, she’s going to tell you that you’re not good enough, that you never were. She’s going to tell you how worthless you really are, then she’s going to kick you out of her bed and out of her life. Pack your things, Melinda Pappas. You’re finished here._

“Janice?” Her voice is a tremor; she’s scared out of her mind. “Janice, please…”

But Janice doesn’t say anything. It’s like those three small words, barely even half a sentence, have stripped her of all the strength she had. Mel watches as she disentangles her arms from her stomach, throws one across her face to hide it, then reaches blindly behind her with her free hand to grope for Mel’s.

Mel lets her find it, lets their fingers twine together. _I’m here,_ she thinks, feeling razed. _If you want me, I’m here. And if you don’t… well, I guess I’m here anyway. I don’t got no-one or nowhere else to go._

Janice pulls Mel’s arm over her body, shuffles back a little until they’re pressed tightly together. Mel lets herself grow limp, awed by the contact in all those places Janice denied her before. It astounds her, how something like this can feel so much more intimate than Janice gasping out her climax against her skin. A final gift, maybe, before she cuts ties, before she cuts Mel down and out of her life, before she—

“It’s not you,” Janice says again, and then she’s bringing their hands down to her belly, down lower, stopping just above the waistband of her pants. “You’re not the one I don’t…”

_Oh._

Mel feels like all the air has been blasted out of her lungs. “I’m not?”

Janice shakes her head. “I do trust you.”

“Then what…?”

Janice doesn’t answer. For a few long moments, she doesn’t say or do anything. Mel holds herself as still and silent as she can; that’s no mean feat when all she wants is to fill the noise inside her head with something less frightening. She tries to be patient, tries to be understanding, but Janice can make a few seconds’ silence last a whole darn year if she sets her mind to it.

The silence stretches out endlessly, but the stillness does not. Slowly, fingers trembling over Mel’s knuckles, Janice guides her hand down. She breaches the twin barriers of her clothing, the worn trousers and the underwear beneath, brings her down and down, all the way down until Mel’s fingertips brush the damp curls and they both suck in their breath, and then—

—and then, impossibly, Janice lets go.

Mel’s heart stalls in her chest. She’s afraid to move even an inch, afraid that Janice will realise what she’s done and change her mind. “Janice?”

“Yeah.” She’s breathing heavily. “Yeah, it’s okay. Go on.”

Mel doesn’t know what to do. She strokes her once, tentative and experimental, and closes her eyes when Janice groans. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Mel swallows hard, feeling the weight of the moment settle like a weight across her chest. She lets her fingers dip down, seeks out the place where Janice is hot and slick.

“What do you want?” she asks, inexplicably frightened. “Should I—”

“No.” Janice moves her hips a little, grinds herself wetly against Mel’s fingers, guiding without any of her usual command. “Like that. Just…” She holds on to the edge of the bed with one hand and gropes blindly with the other, grabbing Mel by the hip to pull her in close and press their bodies flush together. “Don’t look at me. Please.”

Mel nods, though she knows Janice won’t see. “I won’t,” she promises, and rubs her with her whole hand. “My goodness, you’re so…”

“Shh.”

They both lapse into silence, then. Janice seems to be waiting, holding her confession inside until she’s a little closer, until she’s desperate and out of control. Mel wonders what she wants from this, whether it’s the intimacy or just the distraction of having her body on the edge. Either way, it works, and as Janice’s body starts to shudder and tremble against her hand, she turns her head and tries again to speak.

“It’s me.”

Mel blinks. “I’m not…”

“It’s _me_ ,” Janice says again. The urgency of what they’re doing lends itself to her voice, makes her sound almost frantic. “It’s me, Mel, okay? I don’t trust _me_. I don’t…”

Her breath hitches, the words cut off by a whimper and the ghost of a spasm against Mel’s fingers.

“Oh my.”

“I’m not much of a prize,” Janice goes on, ignoring her. Her voice is rising in pitch, trembling in rhythm with her body. It’s intoxicating, and that makes it very difficult for Mel to make sense of the words. “Not much of anything. And I don’t… _Jesus, there_ …”

Mel freezes. “Where?”

Janice doesn’t answer. She just keeps going like the interruption never happened, confessions gritted out between groans and whimpers. “My track record ain’t exactly good, you know?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Mel manages weakly, trying with only limited success to focus on two things at once. “You seem to be doing pretty well from where I’m sitting.”

“ _Mel_.” She whimpers again, twice in quick succession, then rushes on. “People don’t… they don’t stick around.” Her eyes are closed, her thighs twitching. “I let you see me… I let you get inside me… you’re gonna run out too.”

Mel swallows hard. This is about the last thing she expected.

 _My goodness,_ she thinks numbly. _You’re just like me._

“I’m not going anywhere,” she hears herself say. “Trust that.”

Janice chokes, passion and pain at the same time. “I’ll screw it up,” she whispers. “That’s what Covingtons do.”

Mel shakes her head in awe, unable to process what she’s hearing, unable to reconcile it with what she’s doing, how those two things work in tandem.

The reflection of herself is a brutal, vicious thing; hasn’t she been agonising over this very same question herself? Isn’t this her nightmare too? The voices in her head telling her that Janice will see through her, that she’ll pierce the lies and the falsehood that Mel has built up around herself and finally recognise that there’s nothing of value in her. Mel doesn’t need to screw anything up; she just needs to exist as she is, idealistic and inexperienced and utterly foolish.

It floors her, seeing and feeling the same fears in Janice, her innate lack of trust twisting itself into something so familiar. Mel has only ever seen the differences between their demons, her sneaky slithering serpents and Janice’s roaring raging dragons; she’s never thought to look a little closer, to realise that they’re both wearing the same darn scales.

“You silly thing,” she says, and she’s not sure which one of them she’s talking to.

Janice lets out a desperate noise, close to a wail. Mel presses down as hard as she can, moves her fingers in quick hard strokes. She doesn’t like it this rough herself — _“treat her like a lady,”_ she chided the first time they did this, when Janice went at her like a bulldozer and wondered why it didn’t work — but she knows the way Janice kisses and she’s felt her hips get violent when she’s on the edge.

This is all so new to her. She’s never been allowed to do it on her own like this, with Janice’s hands so far away and her voice running on a very different subject, but instinct carries her where experience falters, connecting all the little fractured pieces she didn’t even know she’d picked up. _She likes this. She needs that._ Without ever letting her do this by herself, Janice has taught her surprisingly well.

She gasps now, achingly close. Mel can feel it, the tension a thread pulled impossibly tight.

“Don’t…” She’s delirious, almost incoherent, and _so close_. “Don’t leave me, Mel, please.”

Mel kisses the top of her head, a flicker of tenderness, and then it’s over, Janice shuddering and spasming and surging against her. This time she does cry out, a sob-like sound that smothers Mel’s reply.

“…and don’t _you_ leave _me_.”

Janice takes a long time to catch her breath, and Mel relishes the way she feels, panting and shifting against her. She doesn’t take back her hand, even after it’s over. She doesn’t want to break the contact, doesn’t want to let go of the trust Janice showed in letting her touch her unsupervised. Her fingers are sticky, and so is Janice, but still she doesn’t want to pull away. She wants to stay like this all night, just touching her and letting her heart be touched in return.

After a while, Janice tightens her stomach muscles and says, “Next time, maybe?”

Mel doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about, what part of herself she’s offering. _If I let you get inside me…_

“Doesn’t need to be,” she says, surprising herself. “We got all the time in the world.”

She’s not sure if she really believes that, even now, but she’s a darn sight closer than she was a few minutes ago.

Janice rolls over onto her back, taking care not to dislodge Mel’s hand. Mel’s breath catches at the sensation, Janice’s thighs shifting slickly against her wrist. She feels so connected to her, so unimaginably close. It quiets her doubts, grants her a rare moment of not wondering or worrying, of not waiting for the other shoe to drop and Janice to walk out the door. It grants her a moment of peace, of feeling safe in this beautiful mess they’ve made. It’s been a long while since she let herself feel that way about it, since she let herself see it as anything other than fleeting. She didn’t want to risk feeling happy when every moment found her braced for the end.

“I meant it,” Janice murmurs drowsily. “When I said I want you more than anything.”

Mel kisses her temple, her cheek, and finally her lips. She loves her so much when she’s like this, sticky and lazy and comfortable, when the barriers are down and she’s almost, _almost_ exposed.

“I know you did,” she says. “It’s just hard to believe sometimes, that’s all.”

Janice lifts her head a little, studies her through half-lidded eyes. For perhaps the first time since they started, Mel finds herself wondering if Janice can see her demons too, if she can hear the voices and see the serpents slithering around in her head. Janice is about most unobservant woman Mel’s ever met, but maybe she’s her exception.

It’s a such strange idea. That she could be anyone’s exception, least of all someone like Janice Covington. Who could imagine such a wonderful, impossible thing?

“Hard for you too, huh?” Janice asks after a beat or two. “Trust?”

“Guess so,” Mel admits. “Never been worth much of anything to anyone before. Least, not no-one I wasn’t born to. Then there’s you, and… my goodness, the way you look at me…” She shakes her head, awed. “How’s a gal supposed to believe that’s real?”

Janice shakes her head. “You tell me,” she says, ever so softly.

Mel strokes her. Slow, lazy, without intent. She’s not trying to work her up this time, just relishing the intimacy. Still, it makes Janice suck in her breath, a sharp hiss between her teeth, and when her eyes slide shut Mel steals the moment to watch her lashes flutter against her cheeks. _You’re so beautiful,_ she thinks. _I could spend my whole life learning your face._

Even now, it’s so hard to imagine that Janice might want the same.

Janice’s eyelids twitch as she comes back to herself. Mel reads the warning and looks away as they open; she wouldn’t want to be caught staring, now, would she?

“Hell of a pair, huh?” Janice muses softly. “I don’t trust me, you don’t trust you… Jesus, what a mess.”

“But you trust me,” Mel says, almost to herself. “And I trust you. Lotta folks would kill for that.”

Janice laughs. It’s rich and warm, like the sticky heat on Mel’s fingers, trapped between Janice’s thighs.

“It’s a start,” Janice says softly.

Mel brushes the hair away from her face with her free hand. She lets her thumb linger at her temple, soaking up the sweat and the warmth. Janice flinches a little when Mel leans in to look at her, but she doesn’t turn her face away, doesn’t hide from her. She doesn’t say _‘I love you,’_ either, but Mel can see her heart in her eyes and she can hear it.

It is a start, she realises, and a darn good one.

She opens her mouth to say the words, but doesn’t get the chance. Janice smiles at her, a rare moment of unguarded softness, and all the breath bleeds out of Mel’s chest.

Janice’s eyes slide shut again, then, blocking the view to her heart, but Mel finds that she doesn’t mind. She’s so quiet, so tranquil. It’s such a precious thing.

Later, when the post-coital fog has lifted, the peace will too. Janice will start tossing and turning, muttering and grumbling and not sleeping at all; it happens every time. For now, though, she’s still and perfectly peaceful, and Mel wouldn’t give that up for anything in the world. She’s is struck dumb by the sight of her, the slow steady rhythm of her breathing, the rise and fall of her chest, the lines on her face growing smooth.

Janice Covington is the most powerful woman Mel has ever met, not because she enjoys the power but because she feels like she needs it, like it keeps her alive, like it’s the only way to survive in the world they live in. Looking at her now, peaceful and perfect like this, Mel can’t help wondering if the opposite is the real truth.

 _You could stop this darn war,_ Mel thinks, _if only you let the world see you like this._

That won’t ever happen, though. Heck, it’s taken this long for Janice to let Mel see her like this, much less anyone else. That’s a treasure in itself, a gift that Mel keeps locked away for the days when she needs it. When her own voices are at their loudest, when she can’t silence them with knowledge or truth, she opens up the part of her memory that has seen Janice like this, and tells herself that she’s the only one in the world who can.

It doesn’t always silence them. But when it does, they stay silent for a very long time.

They’re silent now. Tranquil and calm, like the look on Janice’s face. It doesn’t happen often, the two of them at peace in the same moment, and Mel relishes it. She’s sleepy too, but she won’t let herself go just yet. Later, when Janice is restless and irritable, when there’s nothing to be gained from staying awake, Mel will drift off to the sound of muttered curses, grateful that she gets to share those as well.

For now, though, she’ll drink in the rhythm of Janice’s breathing, the slick warmth shifting against her hand, the silence inside her own head. She’ll take it all in, and when the morning comes, when she can’t stop talking and Janice is quiet and hiding her face, she’ll remember that here and now they were both at peace.

They both have their demons. They both have voices that won’t be silenced, the serpents and the dragons, the scaled beasts that hold them captive inside their own heads. They both have their struggles, their insecurities, their pain. They have so much darkness inside them, so many things that should make a moment like this impossible. They both have so many reasons to hate themselves…

…and so many reasons to love each other.

In moments like this, Mel thinks, that’s all that matters. Her heart has never felt as full or as whole as it does when it’s cradling Janice’s head and keeping rhythm with her breathing. Janice is so powerful, so passionate, and Mel is so completely in love with her. She’d tear the fabric of the universe apart if that’s what it took to preserve this moment.

There’s nothing else in the world right now. Just _them_ , her and Janice and their cooling, comfortable bodies.

What demon stands a chance against that?

*


End file.
